“Free” Violates The Law Of Balance

As a writer I am totally opposed to the current trend of authors giving away their books for free, in hopes that action will entice people to read their work, and purchase other book offerings. Amazon has an ebook division where you can offer your book for free, but you’ll be hard pressed to find divisions within the company where they offer physical products for free! As a reader you probably would balk heavily at the idea of working for two weeks for nothing at your place of employment, and so you should.

Every person’s labor, or service, is worthy of compensation, including an authors time spent writing a book. If a book is priced correctly, then that price represents the books true value, in which case, a “free book” would have “zero value”, and it is beyond my understanding why anyone would waste their time downloading it? The conflicting belief that our readers time and money are precious to them while an author’s time is not, is only the tip of the iceberg, that represents a whole slew of conflicting beliefs people hold.

The solution to this dilemma is to simply offer the reader a sampling of an author’s work that is not intended for publication. This action allows the reader to discover whether they enjoy the authors writing style, and it keeps the marketplace from being flooded with free books that don’t sell, are never read, and only work to fill up a person’s new ebook reading appliance!

Coincidentally enough I came upon this post (see link below) shortly after writing what you are now reading. It seems this gentleman has a problem with having his ideas and writing skills exploited by other people, at his expense. What we’re witnessing now is something relatively new in the marketplace, that’s come about as the result of the ease with which people may now publish their works on a world-wide basis. This has never occurred before in the history of the world, and of course it is creating its own unique problems that need to be solved.

I think this gentleman is really voicing his frustrations over how the rich continue to get richer on the backs of the poor, and how big business often has no qualms about exploiting their employees, or the public in general. This is something that everyone has to eventually take a stand on sooner or later. Today it is someone else who is the loser, but tomorrow it could be you!